


and still i sleep

by athenadevice



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse (Supernatural), Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Yikes, guess who wrote endverse fanfic in the year 2020???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27090538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenadevice/pseuds/athenadevice
Summary: He’s not sure when they began to share a bed, just like he’s not sure when Castiel’s cabin becomes a facade for something else. There’s a lot Dean is not sure of anymore.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 16
Kudos: 64





	and still i sleep

Dean isn’t sure when they began to share a bed.

-

The cabin is dark and smells of rot and dust. Inside there will be cans forgotten, mice running rampant, and smell of musk so deep and terrible that it will take Dean a minute to remember how to breathe again. But outside there is a porch with wooden deck chairs, all of them covered in leaves and dust, untouched and ready, and beside the camp there is a steady supply of water that might just last them years.

Dean presses his foot to the step of the porch and listens as the wood creaks and bends. Dust rises up, and inside creatures scatter, but it feels steady, like it might hold, and Dean steps back.

“This is it,” he says.

Castiel beside him nods. He presses gently the barrel of his rifle to the wood, as if at any moment the wood will give up and break, and the whole thing will crash down upon them. He frowns when nothing happens, and steps back. “Seems like it,” he agrees, though Dean can’t tell if Cas is happy about this or not.

“Home sweet home,” Dean quips, but Cas ignores him and heads into the cabin, leaving Dean to pick up his duffle and hurry after him.

Inside they break open windows, the hinges that holds the shutters closed long rusted. Dust rises up as the light enters the cabin, revealing it to be all one room — a queen-sized bed shoved into one corner, a now useless stove shoved in the other. But it’s shelter and it’s safe and it is, despite Dean’s teasing, _home_.

Castiel helps him set up. They pull a large metal table into the middle of the room and spread out maps, search the cabin for salt and supplies, and gather it into the middle. They unmake the bed and check to see how damaged the mattress is (only partially chewed and lightly filled with mouse droppings). They grab lanterns from Baby as the sky darkens and night comes closer and continue to work before both their stomachs rumble, and they agree to pause.

There’s knocking on the door and the other campers (survivors? victims? idiots?) have gathered out front announcing that dinner is ready. 

When they step out of the cabin, a young woman with dark brown hair hurries forward and grabs Castiel’s arm eagerly.

“And where is your cabin?” she asks, her fingers curling the hair on the base of Castiel’s neck. Dean tries to ignore how this makes the pit of his stomach turn, how it makes him look away. The angel — _former angel_ — grins wickedly and murmurs into her ear, making her giggle and blush and before Dean can say anything, Castiel walks away and leaves Dean in his cabin alone.

-

He’s not sure when they began to share a bed, just like he’s not sure when Castiel’s cabin becomes a facade for something else. There’s a lot Dean is not sure of anymore — like when Castiel shook off his trench coat and began wearing that hippie shit, or when Castiel started drinking, or self-medicating, or even when Castiel started fucking. Hell, he’s not really sure how they ended up in fucking _Camp Chitaqua_ and he’s beginning to suspect that in his attempt to keep this entire situation together and in hand, he’s slowly losing his grip.

And it only becomes more apparent when Dean wakes up one morning with Castiel asleep beside him.

-

At night, Dean crawls into their bed. At one point it was his and now it’s theirs, and he doesn’t remember the moment they came to share it. 

They don’t go to bed together. Castiel’s night habits are far more adventurous and long-lasting than Dean’s, but Dean wakes at night to the screen door slamming shut and to the smell of weed, sweat, and cum and then he feels the sheets being pulled from him, feels the mattress dip before he hears a heavy sigh and knows that Castiel has crawled in beside him.

They sleep apart, their bodies never settle enough that Dean might accidentally brush against Castiel’s arm, or that Castiel’s foot might rub against Dean’s leg. Most mornings Dean wakes alone, the space beside him long cold and his hands smooths the sheets in hope to pick up some warmth — a memory of Castiel being there.

-

Usually he finds Castiel surrounded by what Dean can only call his groupies. They laugh and talk, pulling Castiel’s attention towards them, touching, grabbing, and rubbing him. It seems like the angel basks in it, loves the act of worship.

Dean wonders when his Cas became this. He thinks it was probably when he broke his leg, laid up for a month away from the action and from Dean. The first time Dean let him share his bed, with no better shelter or space for him. (Dean admits it might have begun long before that, maybe a knife to a chest in a barn, maybe a fish scrabbling desperately to shore.)

-

At night Dean wakes.

He sleeps light now. Always has, but now it only takes a creak of a door, a light careful tread of a foot, a gentle shift in the mattress beside him for Dean to wake.

He’s not sure how he’s gotten so used to Cas being beside him. How the slam of the door or the floor creaking doesn’t send him reaching for his gun when Cas sneaks in at night. How some nights he can’t sleep without Cas beside him, to the point where he just lies awake, his heart racing, his mind wandering until the smell of weed, of sweat, and of sex fill his nose as the mattress adjusts and as the blankets lift, cool air pooling in as Cas crawls in beside him.

He’s not really sure how they got here at all.

-

The thing is, Dean knows that Castiel is into him, has seen him glance at his lips, has seen his eyes linger too long on Dean’s body. There are moments between them that one motion, one unthinking step, could change them forever. Dean wrestles with this like he wrestles with everything else about Cas.

One evening, Castiel comes to the cabin early. So early, Dean isn’t even in bed yet. He’s sitting at a table, using a dim lamplight to view a ragged map, strategies and plans moving quickly through his head. Castiel stumbles in, a laugh dying on his lips as he takes in Dean before he sits and waits.

Dean explains, explains what they have to do next. Castiel nods and adds suggestions. He then places his hand on Dean’s.

Castiel looks at Dean. He bites his lip. An open invitation.

“Cas, no.”

Castiel snatches his hand away.

“Forgot it, Dean,” he snaps, getting up. The door slams behind him.

-

Dean will reach out one night and find his hands empty and wanting, for his entire life has been empty and wanting.

The nights Castiel is there, present beside him, are the nights that scare Dean the most. The ones where he lays, afraid to look at Cas, lest he turns and finds he has become Lot’s wife. That his sorrow will fill him and disappointment will turn him to salt. So Castiel lays beside him and Dean keeps a good space between them so that he cannot feel the angel beside him, so he will not feel the dip in the bed or the hand that reaches out. So that he will not know disappointment.

And yet it still finds him.

-

They fuck other people, of course.

This is known between them and the rest of the camp. Dean stumbles into the arms of pretty, eager, women; takes comfort in the familiarity of their soft curves, of the long length of their hair. When they find other camps or other groups while on missions, sometimes Dean takes comfort in strange men, lets them fuck him roughly in the old abandoned outbuilding just outside of the camp before he stumbles home and climbs back into his bed. Only once Castiel was there when he got in, already curled up in their bed. Dean was pretty sure Castiel was pretending to sleep. The rise and the fall of the quilt had stopped briefly when Dean had stepped near.

-

Castiel begins to hide pill bottles around the cabin. Dean finds them, orange and empty, as they rattle out behind closed drawers, tumble out of the couch cushions, or roll from under their bed. At first the sight of them brings terror to Dean’s eyes, but by the time he finds the ones hidden in the cracks of the floorboard, he has grown numb to them and gently places them back into their hiding spots.

Castiel comes back to their bed, less and less after the night Dean refuses him. When he does come back, he smells so strongly of weed and sex that Dean is immediately awoken. He watches Castiel’s gait stumbling as he clumsily kicks off his shoes, his thighs hitting the furniture before he pulls the blanket up and crawls in beside Dean. He sighs heavily and Dean hears him turn and wonders if Castiel has stretched his hand out too, has hoped that Dean would turn over and let their fingers lace together.

-

Past him has less wrinkles and laughs easily and willingly.

“I like past you,” Castiel tells him and Dean’s insides go numb.

He watches Castiel watching past him. Sees an eagerness in the angel’s eyes, one he hasn’t seen in a long time. A hope.

“I like past you,” Castiel tells him and it stabs Dean, turns him cold and deadened. He wonders later if Castiel knew what he was doing when he said that.

-

In the end, Dean has a plan. It’s cruel, it’s horrible, and it’s logical. It might not work (it probably won’t). If he dies, he dies. If everyone dies… well, it’s a numbers game in the end and he’s seen enough death that these few won’t really factor into the total sum.

The door creaks open and Castiel is there. Dean didn’t think he would show, too enamoured with this younger Dean, too pissed at him to show.

“So… what is the plan?” Castiel drawls out, slipping into the chair beside him. Dean tells him. Castiel listens, silently, his mouth becomes a firm line.

“You get why I have to do this?” Dean tells him.

Castiel nods.

“And? You’re on board?”

“Of course.”

(“I’m not going to lie to you,” he had told the camp. “Me and him… it’s a pretty messed-up situation we got going.”

God, if that only told the half of it.)

-

On their last night on earth, Dean reaches out and finds Castiel’s hand: palm up, warm and ready. He weaves their fingers together and turns, ready to become Lot’s wife. She, after all, turned willingly, ready to watch the destruction of what she called home, to watch her life crumble before her.

“This is it,” Dean says as he grips Castiel’s hand tighter, trying to commit to memory how Cas’s fingers feel within his, trying to remember where the calluses are, what parts have been broken and repaired.

“This is it,” Castiel mumbles, and he too grips tightly.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Damien Jurado song "Sheets" (Still I sleep in the very sheets he's been in).
> 
> Thanks to hamburgergod for beta-ing this for me!!!


End file.
